It is an idea that
seizes the imagination. There is a flow of new ideas abroad, he thinks,
widening realizations, unprecedented hopes and fears. There is a
consciousness of new powers and new responsibilities. We are sharing the
adolescence of our race. It is giving history a new and more intimate
meaning for us. It is bringing us into directer relation with public
affairs,--making them matter as formerly they didn't seem to matter.
That idea of the bright little private life has to go by the board."
"I suppose it has," she said, meditatively, as though she had been
thinking over some such question before.
"The private life," she said, "has a way of coming aboard again."
Her reflections travelled fast and broke out now far ahead of him.
"You have some sort of work cut out for you," she said abruptly.
"Yes. Yes, I have."
"I haven't," she said.
"So that I go about," she added, "like someone who is looking for
something. I'd like to know if it's not jabbing too searching a question
at you--what you have found."
Sir Richmond considered. "Incidentally," he smiled, "I want to get
a lasso over the neck of that very forcible and barbaric person, your
father. I am doing my best to help lay the foundation of a scientific
world control of fuel production and distribution.
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